Kindergarten Activities Related to Book Week 2015

During a curricular session that was held in May 2014 all the kindergarten assistants and their respective LSAs got together and created stories based on a set of pictures.

The Making of Big Books

These stories were then made into 5 big books with the following titles:

Sirenessa l-Prinċipessa

Fifi u Fifina

Is-Sorpriża ta’ Mickey

Pinocchio

Lelinu l-Mitluf

What are Big Books?

The term big books describes large format books with big print texts and illustrations that are highly visible to learners as their teachers read them to the entire class.

In fact, big books are effective for developing concepts about books mainly because of their size (Holdaway 1979). As the teacher reads the book and tracks the print from left to right across the page, children see that books are for reading. They also learn to the print from the picture. Children make the connection that the oral language they hear from their teacher is being read from the book.

Shared Reading

Using big books in the classroom usually involves a-reading experience. In reading, the teacher and the children read and reread the book together. During shared reading sessions, the teacher, “takes the lead, orchestrating responses, drawing attention to reading strategies and at whole text, sentence and word levels appropriate to the age, experience, and ability of the majority of the class ”(Bodman & Franklin, 2014, p.10). Each shared reading session should have a different focus so as to provide explicit and systematic teaching across the range of skills needed for text reading. The same book could be used to provide opportunities to:

Build word-reading skills;

Attend to print;

Develop reading comprehension;

Build fluency;

Lead to extended writing.

Book Week Activities

Kinder 1 and Kinder 2 classes organised reading and storytelling sessions. During reading, the kindergarten assistants explicitly modelled the skills of proficient readers, including reading with fluency and expression. They also encouraged the pupils to join in thus creating an interactive reading experience for the pupils.

The kindergarten assistants also conducted follow-up activities such as games, interactive whiteboard activities and crafts that were related to the shared reading and storytelling sessions. The crafts, were then displayed on inviting and visually stimulating boards.

Sirenessa l-Prinċipessa

Pinocchio

Lelinu l-Mitluf

Is-Sorpriża ta’ Mickey

Fifi u Fifina

Is-Sorpriża ta’ Mickey

Lelinu l-Mitluf

Sirenessa l-Prinċipessa

Is-Sorpriża ta’ Mickey

The easi speak was used to record year 2 children reading the stories. The recorded versions of the stories were made available to everyone at school so that teachers, kindergarten assistants and LSAs would have the possibility to utilise them during lessons/activities.